


stop time right here in the snowfall

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Series: daemon verse [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Christmas Fluff, Consensual Daemon Touching, Daemon Separation, Daemons, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, His Dark Materials Inspired, I also invented my own daemon lore, I co-opted the term cognitive dissonance for something daemon related, Light Angst, Mentions of PTSD, Oliver has a mild existential crisis about his daemon, POV Oliver Queen, Playing in the Snow, Post-Lian Yu, Romantic Fluff, Season/Series 01, don't judge me pls, holiday fluff, unsettled daemons, why? bc i wanted to and nobody can stop me lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28345254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: It's the holiday season and Starling has been graced with its first winter snowfall. Oliver hates the cold, but his partially Separated daemon Strelka loves it, resulting in some tension. Felicity and Brynn help him gather the courage to step outdoors, so the four of them can spend some time together enjoying the snow.
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Series: daemon verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075769
Comments: 19
Kudos: 126





	stop time right here in the snowfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefrizz13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefrizz13/gifts).



> yes i have been MIA for six months. no, it was not my choice. shitty personal and health crises with an added immensely intense research project as the cherry on the top meant that i basically haven't written any olicity fics at all since june.
> 
> the wonderful erica (and the rest of the group chat) managed to encourage my muse enough to allow me to write this. so thank you guys!! and thank you to all my readers for being so incredibly patient x
> 
> i've collated my daemon verse fics into a series you can now easily navigate through :)

Oliver hates the snow. Which apparently doesn’t bother his daemon, Strelka, because she’s all too happy to play in it. Maybe it’s their partial Separation that results in his severe dislike being juxtapositioned by her curiosity; either way, Oliver has to admit slight relief that her ability to travel distances from him means that she can be outside exploring the Queen Manor’s extensive gardens, which have been blanketed by the first snowfall of the holiday season, while he remains indoors next to a roaring blaze in the fireplace, dry and warm.

He stands watching through the lounge windows as his daemon frolics and bounds happily through the thick snow in arctic hare form. It’s not her Settled form, of course - she’s been Unsettled since the island, but she has her favorite animals to transform into. Both of their mindsets are influencing her current form; Strelka always seems to adopt the form of a hare when he’s feeling particularly anxious and cagey, which he is due to the weather reminding him of unpleasant, freezing nights spent struggling for survival on Lian Yu.

But she’s thrown her own spin on her form and adapted for the cold, exchanging her usual short hazel pelt for a bushier white one to blend into the snow. Her long ears have adorable black tips and splotches of black on her paws. It’s only those little black patches of fur that allow her to be visible as she leaps around the snow, her powerful hind legs allowing her to spring into the air with ease.

It sets Oliver’s teeth on edge to sense his daemon’s glee about the weather on the fringes of his mind. Even though he’s wearing a holiday jumper and two pairs of socks, and the room is almost uncomfortably hot because of the fire, he can feel the chill in his bones due to their bond. 

Soft footsteps sounding behind him alert him to somebody’s approach, and for a brief second, he tenses. He quickly recognizes them though, and instantly relaxes, twitching to turn around and face them. A gentle hand lands on his shoulder, stroking down his shoulder with fingertips trailing down his arm as Felicity entwines their hands, stepping up to his side.

“Hi,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

“Hey,” he replies back absentmindedly. After a moment, Oliver blinks away from watching Strelka and turns his attention on his girlfriend, smiling tentatively.

She’s wearing a light blue Hanukkah sweater patterned with dreidels and menorahs: her personal way of representing her faith in a Christmas-focused household, which has been decorated with holly garlands, ornaments, and a beautiful, grand Christmas tree. Her daemon Brynn is curled around her neck as an ermine, like a furry white scarf. Upon spotting Strelka outside, he uncoils and slinks down her arm, transforming fluidly into a chunky but fluffy arctic fox as soon as he lands gracefully on the floor. The winter season has prompted some more exploratory arctic animal forms they’ve never seen their daemons take before. Like Strelka, the tips of his short, stubby ears are flecked with black. He presses his face up against the glass, his brush twitching excitedly.

“It must be strange,” Felicity muses, now watching Strelka as well. “We’ve never really talked about how you and Strelka feel, being partially Separated.”

“Because there’s not much to talk about,” he replies. “It happened and now we live with it.” He pauses and then confesses quietly, “It’s awful, but I’m kind of grateful for it on days like today. Strelka enjoys the snow and I… don’t. What about you two?” He glances between Felicity and Brynn.

His girlfriend’s daemon flicks his tail across his legs. There’s no skin contact between them; while it is considered taboo to touch another person’s daemon, Oliver and Felicity are so intimate at this point that stroking each other’s daemons has become their new normal, but they seldom do it out in the open.

“We’ve got a weird relationship with snow,” Brynn says, peering up at him with twitching whiskers. “It never snowed at all in Vegas when we were growing up, so snow was super exciting. But then when we went to MIT in Cambridge, occasionally we would get some terrible snowstorms that were really destructive, and the heating in the student dorms broke so everybody was freezing.” He stares wistfully out at his fellow daemon, who is now springing along the rose garden wall in the distance, half-vanishing into piles of snow each time with only the black tips of her ears peeking out.

Catching sight of Brynn’s yearning look, Oliver suggests, “You should go out and join her.”

The arctic fox’s ears flip back. “But then Felicity has to come outside too and you’ll be left alone. That’s not fair.”

“It’s okay,” he assures. “I would much rather you have fun with Strelka.” But both Brynn and Felicity look upset at the idea of leaving him watching from the sidelines, so Oliver sighs, gathers his courage, and decides, “Fine, I’ll come out with you.”

Brynn responds with a cute, excited little fox jump, but Felicity still appears a little uncertain and worried. “I don’t want you to put yourself in an uncomfortable position for us, Oliver.”

He brushes a kiss against the side of her head lovingly, smiling when she hums and leans into his touch. “I’ll be okay. I have you to take care of me. Let’s go grab our coats and get bundled up.” The archer taps the tip of her nose. “Wouldn’t want you getting frostbite, now, would we?”

The sun is peeking through the clouds and casting dappled rays through the iced-over, skeleton-esque trees onto the snow, which has been disrupted with sets of pawprints from Strelka, when they step out onto the patio. Even though Oliver is wrapped up in a sweater, a winter jacket, and a scarf, hat, and gloves, the biting wind still seeps through his thick layers to prickle at his skin, making him shiver. As soon as he starts feeling anxious, however, Felicity immediately grabs his hand and squeezes it to ground him.

Strelka pokes her head out from a snowbank, her long ears twitching. As soon as she spots Brynn, who is vibrating happily at Felicity’s heels, she streaks across the garden and bowls him over. As they tumble away together, they transform in a flurry of snowflakes; Strelka into a dense-bodied silver lynx and Brynn into a larger and sleeker snow leopard. The snow clings to their thick fur as they purr and nuzzle at each other affectionately.

“Hi, Oliver,” Strelka greets him shyly, flicking one tufted ear.

He manages a faint smile. “Hey.”

It’s probably weird for everybody else that the two of them aren’t the bestest of friends who know each other inside and out like most human-daemon pairs. Ever since Lian Yu, they’ve been relatively distant from one another; their shared soul has been severed to the point where the two of them are essentially separate individuals. It wasn’t always like this, though - before the Gambit’s sinking, having Dust extracted from them, and being Separated, they were glued to each other’s sides.

Now it’s almost stressful for them to be around each other for long periods of time, when they’ve been split apart in the most vicious of manners and feel so detached from each other emotionally. In fact, a lot of the time they find themselves at odds due to their differing opinions about vigilantism and Oliver wearing the hood to fulfill his father’s dying wish and save the city from crime and corruption.

“Is it possible that this snow is even colder than the snow we had in Cambridge?” Brynn rumbles, shaking the ice off his mottled pelt. He drapes himself on top of the lynx despite being heavier than her.

Felicity laughs. “Snow is snow, Brynn,” she teases him. “You know that.”

He bares his fangs playfully and then nips at Strelka’s scruff. Oliver feels the tiny pricks on the back of his own neck through their weakened soul connection, and raises his hand to touch the delicate area. Strelka merely growls at Brynn; if any other daemon would have attempted that with her, Oliver has no doubt that she would have snapped, but she’s immensely fond of Brynn - just as he is immensely fond of Felicity. 

“This is the first time it’s snowed since we moved to Starling,” Brynn replies. “I don’t know, it just feels… different somehow. Quieter.”

“Because the snow absorbs sound, which you’re probably not used to,” Strelka tells him, slowly standing up with Brynn still resting on top of her back, his forepaws dangling over her shoulders and hind paws over her haunches, brushing the ground. It’s clear he’s too heavy for her though, as he quickly slides off onto his butt behind her. “When it’s freshly fallen and all fluffy like this, it’s porous, which means it doesn’t reflect sound very well, and ends up muffling it.”

Oliver eyes her in both surprise and dubiety. “How do you know that?”

“I’m just that clever,” she replies, eyes sparkling. When the archer raises an eyebrow, she confesses sheepishly, “Diggle and Herra told me this morning before they signed off for the holidays.”

“That’s where you were?” He thought his daemon was out patrolling the Glades, not hanging around with Diggle and his Doberman daemon.

Strelka flips her ears back and scrunches up her muzzle, anticipating a lecture.

“Oh, relax, Oliver,” Felicity admonishes lightly, tapping him on the chest with the back of her hand. “It’s the holiday season, I think Strelka can take a little break from her patrolling duties, don’t you?”

When he grimaces, his girlfriend bounces up onto her tiptoes and presses a chaste but sweet kiss to his lips before tugging him off the patio and onto the grass - into the snow. It crunches beneath his boots and he winces, expecting cold water to leach through the soles to soak through to his socks. His feet remain warm and dry, however. Felicity ends up leading him into the forest lining the back of the property while their daemons bound ahead of them in their feline forms, weaving their way through the snow-dressed trees like phantoms through a haze of white.

“Here we go!” Felicity says gleefully, walking backward and taking both of his hands as the woods thins out around them into a small glade. “I found this place on my last walk. Isn’t it beautiful, with the snow and the icicles hanging off the tree branches?”

“It’s…” Felicity and the two daemons turn their attention onto him, all three of them looking eager and hopeful. Oliver scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip, biting it fleetingly, before admitting, “Pretty. And peaceful. And I’m not as cold as I thought I would be.”

“Still not your cup of tea, though?” Felicity smiles.

“No. Sorry,” he apologizes.

She rests her head on his shoulder. “It’s okay. It means a lot to me that you even agreed to come out here with us anyway. I love you.” His girlfriend frames his face with her hands delicately and kisses him more deeply this time. Oliver sinks into it, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her flush against him. “Want to go back inside?”

He shakes his head, and, spotting a bench out on the other side of the glade, points to it. “We’re out here now, we might as well sit and enjoy the scenery a bit while Strelka and Brynn get rid of some energy.”

So they make their way over to the bench and clear it of snow as best they can before sitting down, snuggling up to one another for warmth. Felicity starts off by sliding up next to him and cuddling into his side, but eventually migrates onto Oliver’s lap, wrapping her arms around his shoulders in a hug and resting her head there too. The archer rubs up and down her coat-covered back, threading his calloused fingertips through the faux fur on her hood. He watches the pair of daemons playing in the snow over his girlfriend’s head.

They’re taking turns turning into smaller animals so they can chase each other, and Strelka is currently in lynx form galloping after Brynn, who’s dashing over the snow as an ermine, so light on his paws that he’s barely sinking into at all, and instead skimming over it. He’s fast and agile, but his small size means his leaps and bounds are much shorter than Strelka’s. As soon as the lynx tags the ermine by batting her over with one of his giant paws, she wheels around, turns into an arctic hare and springs off, so that when Brynn runs after her as a snow leopard, she’s got a head start.

“Oliver,” Felicity finally whispers, taking a hold of one of his hands. “Your fingers are like ice. We should go home.”

He agrees with a nod, offering, “Want a piggy-back ride?”

Felicity seems all too excited by the idea of that, and hangs off his shoulders with her legs cinched around his waist as they trek back through the forest towards the house. Strelka and Brynn continue wrestling and chasing each other behind them. When they reach the patio, Oliver hesitates to step back inside straight away, glancing back at the daemons. Brynn and Strelka appear to be having so much fun playing together, obviously mirroring the parts of his and Felicity’s souls that are feeling mischievous and lively. It’s a shame that he and Felicity will have to rip her daemon away from his.

“It’s okay, Oliver,” Brynn pipes up, his feline whiskers twitching. “Felicity and I have been training, gradually increasing the length of our Tether. We can manage a whole fifteen feet of distance between us now without any sort of discomfort or pain.”

“You’ve been what?” Oliver asks sharply, horror striking through him. He feels Felicity cringe and drops off his back, rubbing her neck nervously. She knew that this would upset him. Strelka growls and pins Brynn to the ground with her paws. “Felicity, that’s _dangerous_.” Not to mention, it can be agonizing if not done correctly. How long have Felicity and Brynn been doing this - and do they understand that if they accidentally stretch their Tether too far one day, it might snap and leave their shared soul shattered and devastated… Separated?

“It’s _fine_ ,” she stresses. “And not something we need to talk about now. It just means that Brynn can stay out here with Strelka as long as they play in the gardens near the kitchen.”

“This is serious. We can’t just _not_ talk about this,” he snaps.

Felicity crosses her arms over her chest and retorts, “Well, we don’t talk about the fact that Strelka is preparing to Settle again, do we?”

Oliver stiffens the same instance that Strelka flinches and scrambles away from Brynn, hunching over with her silver fur bristling. Through their strained bond, Oliver can sense her panic at being called-out - and he’s confused, because he has no idea whether or not Felicity is speaking the truth.

Is Strelka preparing to Settle again in a permanent form? He knows it’s a possibility; after all, the two of them are still affected by Dust. Strelka is still fully capable of shifting between forms with relative ease. But she’s been shifting a lot more often recently… into lots of different forms, as if she’s exploring them… and it has been taking more energy than usual…

But shouldn’t he be able to sense that sort of thing happening to them? Maybe there’s more of a Separation between them than he thought. They’re starting to achieve cognitive dissonance - thinking independently, with their thoughts and beliefs sometimes not aligning; that’s not something that is usually possible between human and daemon unless they’re Separated. Oliver mentally plucks at their Tether, the link between the parts of their soul they hold. It’s frayed and damaged. The image of it in his brain is that it’s worn thinner and more fragile at Strelka’s end - probably as a result of his traumas being more reflected on her part of his soul than his own, which is due to her voluntarily taking on those mental wounds in a feeble attempt to protect him.

Maybe Strelka and he are slipping further and further away from each other. Maybe one day, their already weak Tether will snap and they’ll entirely disconnect, and no longer be linked _at all_. They’ll become… individuals. _Soul Severance_. That’s even scarier than the idea of Separation, because even with complete Separation, there’s still the faintest link between human and daemon, although there’s cognitive dissonance between them. If Soul Severance occurs, then he and Strelka would become utterly distinct from one another… their soul would be permanently broken apart. Is that even possible? He would probably survive. But would Strelka even continue to _exist_ , when she’s comprised of elemental particles held together by his soul? Or would she just… cease to, and vanish?

Strelka could very well be beginning to slowly fade out of existence, he realizes in horror.

Brynn sees the expression on his face and flips his ears back, blinking as he flicks his tail.

“You didn’t know,” Felicity realizes, her eyes widening. Her gaze flits over to Strelka. His daemon snarls at her defensively, her fur sticking up on end.

Right, they were… talking about how Strelka is getting ready to Settle again. “No, I didn’t,” he murmurs, also eyeing his daemon, but with bemusement and stomach-twisting worry. His daemon refuses to look at him. “I had no idea.”

Felicity heaves a sigh. “The new year,” she decides. “Let’s wait until the holidays end and we’re in 2013 to discuss this, give ourselves emotional breaks. Strelka isn’t Settling again in the immediate future, and Brynn and I won’t do any more distance training until we’ve talked it out with you properly.” She holds her hand out. “Deal?”

Given that he’s unsure he has the emotional capacity to deal with his first Christmas back in Starling with his family combined with these daemon problems, Oliver reluctantly shakes it. “Deal.” To be honest, he’s rather relieved that he won’t have to open that can of worms yet and address Strelka’s apparent deceitfulness. He should have known, really… he can be an excellent liar when he wants to be, of course his daemon is the same.

Cocoa with peppermint sticks at the kitchen table sitting opposite his girlfriend as they watch their daemons rolling around in the snow outside does help Oliver feel a little bit better. They crack the window open so that their daemons can come inside when they’re ready, and relax and chat meanwhile. Raisa has been baking some gingerbread cookies and left them to cool on a wiring rack, so they steal a couple to dip into their hot chocolate. They know for certain they’re nut-free as ever since Felicity has moved into the Queen mansion, there hasn’t been a trace of a single nut inside the walls. When Felicity reveals that she hasn’t actually eaten anything since breakfast, Oliver fetches some of the latkes left over from their Hanukkah celebrations earlier in the week, to reheat in the oven.

“I’m sorry your mom wasn’t able to get here for Hanukkah,” he says quietly, remembering how Felicity told them that one of the Smoak family traditions is making both latkes and sufganiyot together.

“She’ll be here for New Year’s,” Felicity smiles. “And it’s okay. I will admit I was worried about spending Hanukkah alone in a Christian household, but Moira and Walter have been incredibly accommodating. And it was very sweet of Thea to specially buy Hanukkah decorations for the house and your Christmas tree, to make sure my faith is represented. I think Orin is even starting to warm up to Brynn.”

Oliver nods, equally pleased by that information. When Felicity and Brynn first moved in, all of the other daemons in the household were wary of her Unsettled daemon, attempting to avoid him as much as possible. Now they’ve been living with them for a couple of months, Moira’s lion daemon Tariel, Walter’s raven daemon Loreu, and Thea’s coyote daemon Orin, have all got used to Brynn’s shifting back and forth - probably because they were forced to acclimate to Strelka’s own Unsettled nature, and then their tolerance progressed to the point where they accepted the two daemons’ Unsettled shifting. Felicity and Brynn have basically become part of the Queen family - they became part of their family even before Oliver and Felicity started dating.

“You’re part of our family now,” Oliver tells her simply. “If your faith is important to you, it’s important to us too.” He hesitates and then stands, fumbling around in the baking cupboard until he finds what he’s looking for. “I actually got you a Hanukkah gift, but it arrived too late. I was going to give you it on Christmas day but, thinking about it, it’s probably better if Mom, Walter, and Thea don’t see.”

He slides the small box wrapped in blue paper towards her. Felicity picks it up gingerly, casting him a curious but embarrassed look. “Oliver, you didn’t have to -”

“I wanted to,” he cuts her off firmly, resting his hand on top of hers to stop her from pushing the gift back towards her. “Both Strelka and I wanted to. Making these was her idea.”

Felicity kisses his cheek in silent thanks before opening the box. Inside, nestled in a bed of black velvet lay two non-descript rings. They’re gold in color, not particularly bright and flashy, but it’s not their appearance or carats that make them valuable. As if sensing the gravity of the moment, Brynn zips in through the window in his usual goldfinch form before curling up on Felicity’s lap as an ermine, peering over the tide of the table at the two rings. Strelka follows closely behind him, but remains perched on the window as a black eagle, watching them beadily.

Brynn recognizes what the rings are made of before Felicity does, gasping softly. “Sky-iron?” he blinks up at Oliver in disbelief. “Where and how the hell did you get your hands on meteorite metal?”

“I have my ways,” he shrugs. Reaching forward, he takes one of the rings. “One of them is for you, and one is for me, Felicity. The two rings are forged from the same piece of sky-iron and are therefore linked. If we each infuse a tiny piece of our souls into each ring, it will mean we’ll be able to sense when one another is in danger, by the rings turning cold. By making them, the rings already contain threads of my soul. I thought that maybe after the holidays, I can help you engrave them, which will allow you to transfer a microscopic fragment of your soul into them too. It will help us keep each other safe and, you know… maybe provide you some reassurance when I’m out on the job at night.” He rubs his neck sheepishly, also a little scared of what her reaction will be. “I’m… gifting a piece of myself to you, I guess. In the most literal way possible. Now you have my soul as well as my heart.”

Tearing up, Felicity throws her arms around Oliver’s shoulders in a tight embrace. “They’re _amazing_. Thank you so much.”

The archer hugs her back, and jolts when he feels a spark of electricity and soft fur brushing against his hand. Glancing over Felicity’s shoulder, he chuckles at Brynn, who is clinging to her sweater on her back and very gently nuzzling his fingertips in appreciation. A thrill runs down his spine with a rush of static and shock, and, hearing faint purring, Oliver peers down to see Strelka in puma form rubbing up against Felicity’s legs. He warily lowers one of his arms and stretches his fingers out to his daemon. When she nudges them tenderly with her muzzle, he smiles and buries his face further into his girlfriend’s shoulder.

“Merry Christmas, Oliver,” Felicity whispers into his ear. “Happy Holidays.”

“I love you,” is his simple response.

Brynn flicks his tail over his neck before slipping down onto Strelka’s back, standing so he’s resting his pawpaws on her head. “We love you too.”

“We do,” Strelka murmurs.

Oliver just hugs Felicity even tighter, feeling the lightest he’s ever felt since his return from Lian Yu.

Maybe snow isn’t so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! thank you for reading!
> 
> twitter: @lexiblackbriar


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